[PlanetCCRMA] A Windoze Yikes! and how good CCRMA saved the day

[Joe Hartley]

Before I moved my studio machine to Linux, I used to run Windows98SE and
used the very nice program n-Track for my multi-channel recording.
Yesterday I decided I wanted to bring over some of my old sessions from
n-Track and re-work them as Ardour sessions.  No problem, since n-Track
uses WAV files to store the tracks.  The only issue was that when I had
tracks that did not start at the zero point of the song, I didn't have
a good, accurate way of determining where they should start.

OK, I figured I'd just boot into Windows, export those short tracks as
full length WAVs and I'd be fine.  And I was.  Until I looked in the
n-Track working directory for the song, and I saw extra tracks not in
the current session, but clearly connected to the song.  OK, I thought,
I'll just open them up with CoolEdit, see what they have and decide
whether they're of value.

When I tried that, CoolEdit balked, telling me that it couldn't open
D:\TMP as the temp directory.  Why not?  Oh yeah, I'd moved the content
of D:\ across the network and changed my D: drive over to a ReiserFS drive.

I was curious, though: why did it tell me that it couldn't open the folder
instead of telling me that D: didn't exist?  I opened up My Computer, and
saw that in fact, it still had a D: drive listed.  Hmmmm, open it up... 
nope, not readable, fine.  But I wondered, with 3 hard drives in the box,
it only sees 2 - I wonder which one it thinks D: is.  I wonder if Properties
will tell me...  nope, oh well.

So I go on, export the few short tracks in the session, exit Windows
and reboot....  to find that Linux is complaining vociferously about the
state of the filesystem on / and refuses to load certain modules (like
networking and reiserfs).  WTF???

Then it hits me:  the act of trying to look at the drive under Windows
must have hosed the beginning of the / filesystem!  Arrrrgggghhhhhh!
OK, back into Windows to burn a copy of RH9 disk 1, boot from the CD
in rescue mode, no, don't mount /mnt/sysimage thanks, and then run
fsck on /dev/hdc1.  Lots and lots of errors....  ackkkk!!  OK, fsck is
done, boot again...  but big trouble still ensues, I can't load any
modules, including networking or ReiserFS or anything!  A quick look
at /lib/modules reveals that I have no subdirectory for the kernel I use,
2.4.26-1.ll.rh90.ccrma!!  Zip over to /lost+found, and ohhhhh sh!+, there's
a ton of stuff in there!

A quick look at the contents of the lost+found showed me that it was all
kernel related stuff in there, but it was a hideous mess, and I'd never
get it sorted out and get things put in the right place on my own.

But hang on, I always keep an old kernel on board, can I use that?  One
reboot and a load to 2.4.24-1.ll.rh90.ccrma, and I came up just fine.
It was then a simple thing to do "rpm --erase --nodeps 2.4.26-1.ll.rh90.ccrma"
followed by an "apt-get install 2.4.26-1.ll.rh90.ccrma" and there I was,
safe and sound, booting into my preferred kernel, with all things in
their place.   Whew!!!!!

Now, does anybody know how I can tell Windoze that there's no D: drive to
think about any more????    lol

-- 
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       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa